Whoops, lazy me. Then again, I've been more than busy trying to a) sort my documents and b) sort myself a way forward in education/job terms. Let it be said that German authorities have perfected the art of producing paper. lots of it. It's taken me 5 days to sort through heaps of useless junk and fill 5 (five!) folders full with all sorts of documents I'll never use again in my life. Then, taxes: AAARGH! Income tax forms for years where I effectively had no income, simply because I had a small business in building websites when i was 17. So, so annoying, but that's finally out of the way now.

Poker, to be frank, has been running badly, so I took a break for a few days. However, I will be getting back on the grind some time tonite - hopefully back in form.

Apart from having to get up at some ungodly hour (pre-noon *gasp*), with loads of chores set up for the day, poker has been rather horrible also. I end up down another $150 approximately, with the whole afternoon consisting of me missing flops with frustrating consistency. I somehow only managed to lose $150 and have stopped just now simply because I am running the danger of breaking something if i carry on. Ah well, tomorrow is another day, and who knows: maybe my doomswitch has been turned off by tomorrow afternoon. It should still be perfectly possible to reach +$1000 in 2 more weeks once this downswing is over.

Another nice session, +$250 in 20 games. In addition to that, I got to know a rather nice dude, who goes by the name of "ub40baby" on Cake. He normally plays $100 HU, but switches down in low traffic hours. He's quite a good player, and also hates playing me (which i take as a compliment).

Anyway, thats basically it on the poker front, now for important things (beer and a movie).

Oh, and Rugby World Cup final tomorrow! And what a final it promises to be! I found a nice poem in one of the comments sections on one of the BBC blogs, which is so good, it simply has to be shared with the world:

Ode to England RWC 2007

The USA came, and fought with valour, they could not win, but changed our pallor. Next came the Boks with all their might, and we went down without a fight.And then Samoa, they ducked and weaved, but in the end they too were peeved.

The tide had turned toward our favour, England at last had time to savour. That cup is ours we sought to dream, to wrest it from, will take some team.

The Tongans came, and came on strong, but joy for them did not stay long. They played with flair and were audacious, and in defeat, were ever gracious.

By now with all, the quest to keep, had passed the rose and gone in deep. The doubters, fools and insolent, had sorely missed our real intent.

Then came the Aussies, sleek and brash, felt England, was there to thrash.But soon against our Aussie "muckers", we stunned them with our mauls and ruckers. Not one inch did we relinquish, we give them reason to hate the English.In the fray they were to cower, to England's all pervading power.The hype before, had some believing, that England's finest would soon be leaving. The final act conveyed the truth, again the Aussies were shouting "struth"

The victory there was oh so sweet, but still the work was not complete.

The French were up with loud Oui Oui's, for they'd dispatched the sad Kiwis. And so they felt, like all the rest, that they could beat the very best.The French could taste that golden loot, and lost all thought of Johnnie’s boot. The Paris party did go hail, but not because of England's fail.All Frenchmen wandered in a daze, brought on again, by "les Ingles"

To move ahead, turn back the clocks, as once again we face the Boks. They're big and strong and have a cause, the Afrikaners and the Boers. But Englishmen believe their rite, and this time round will give a fight. We'll wear them down, and find a root, to feel the sting of Johnnie’s boot.

And at the end, the final whistle, where is the shamrock, leek or thistle.No gold and green, no black, les blues, they've all gone home to jeers and boo's. And in the glare, the field of light, left standing are the men in white.The men of England have prevailed, and all the rest have simply failed.

The morale of this story goes, the Champions still wear England's Rose!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

And what a beauty it is! I'm not going to go into any reviews, but it is a Toshiba Satellite A210. All in all, I am quite happy with the thing ... it's fast, looks good, isn't too heavy - the only bad thing about it is Windows Vista.Take it from me, if you don't like being treated like a 3 year old by your own computer, Vista is not for you. It asks you to confirm whatever you want to do like 3 times, before it actually lets you do it. It blocks programs which I want in autostart, because they are deemed as unsafe. It's even more a hardware hog than any previous Windows versions. It tries to look and feel like Mac OS X and fails miserably. It - well - simply sucks.

W-Lan on the other hand rocks, of course. I was able to get rid of approximately 30 metres of RJ-45 cables thanks to a new router =)

On the poker front, things have been going up and down for the last 2 days, but all in all i finally ended up about $250. This put me past te $1000 profit mark for hersh, which resulted in the 1st reset down to a bankroll of $1000. With rake-back, that makes about $400 per person. Next target: a bankroll or $2000, to play $105 Heads up. Targeted time to do it in: 2 weeks.

Today will only be a short session of around 10-15 games, as i am working down the Shamrock later tonight. I run the poker tournaments down there every Thursday, which are rather fun. Low buyin (€10), 15 minute blinds, lots of beer. The tournaments start t around 8pm, and the "Main event" generally has around 30 people playing, but I am expecting more in the winter.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Well, this ain't playing poker for fun anymore. This is the grind. No silly re-raises, no cheeky shoves. Cool and calculating is the way it has to be. No tilting. Not that I tilted before anyway, but now it's serious. So much for the theory:

A solid first session, +$250 in 20 games. Seriously, every HU player worth his salt should be playing there and mopping it up - Just don't play me, of course. I have yet to find play that soft anywhere else. I am currently running this on a stake for herschelw from neverbeg.com, so I will be seeing half of this profit. A few more weeks of this, and I should have the roll to grind on my own dime.

Oh, just got the e-mail: my new laptop is in the mail \o/ (putting a chunk of my off-line roll to good use). It should be here tomorrow, and then i won't be confined to my room anymore - which is at least something.

So, yes, I'm a fuck-up. Messed up the one test I HAD to pass. Ex-student is what I now am. Sounds pretty awful - Hell, it IS pretty damn awful. Am I sad? - Yup. Devastated even? - You bet. Have I told anyone? - Well, they'll probably be reading this in the next few hours (Oh, and once you do, don't pepper me with questions please - I'm fucked over enough as it is). Drowning my sorrow in alcohol didn't make reality go away, sadly. Ignoring it didn't help either, so it looks like I actually have to confront this shit.

So - where to, now? - No idea, really, to be honest. I know I can keep myself over water with a combination of poker and my other part time jobs, but that isn't exactly a long term plan. Free-lance translating, maybe? It's an option, but there are enough people who speak English and German well enough already. Not-so-free-lance translating? Same thing, really. Blogging? lol.

So, I guess it'll be resume writing from here on. Wait and see, Dono, just wait and see where you land. Oh, and traveling is on the plan, of course. I might as well see a bit of the world while sending off resumes all over the place. Not as if anyone is interested in a - no use beating around the bush - loser like me, anyway. It'll be me and my trusty guitar against the world then... Oh, and this little blog to keep track of it all. I might be regretful that I have crashed out of university, but I'll be damned if I can't make something out of this life yet. Lets just see how things go.